


New Results

by iblankedonmyname



Series: Don retcons the Predator (2018) [2]
Category: Aliens vs Predators Series - Various Authors, Predator Original Series (1987-1990)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Romance, Enemies to Friends, I need to build the pining, Interspecies Relationship(s), Multi, Retcon, Slow Burn, but be patient, give me a chance, there will be smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:47:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29715993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iblankedonmyname/pseuds/iblankedonmyname
Summary: While escaping from the secret laboratory, the Fugitive kidnaps Dr. Casey Brackett and the soldier that stole his gear, Quinn McKenna. The Loonies are in pursuit! But so is the bad blood chimera, known as the Ultimate, and the CIA Stargazer project lead, Will Traeger.Can the Fugitive get back to yautja space and expose the experimental bad blood cult intent on wiping out his culture? Will Quinn McKenna save his son and all of humankind?You'll have to read to find out!(Picks up with Fugitive’s escape from the lab in my previous story, New Procedure, and completely alters the Predator (2018) movie.)
Relationships: Casey Bracket/Yautja, Quinn McKenna/Nebraska Williams
Series: Don retcons the Predator (2018) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044252
Comments: 26
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright here we go! Let's change that movie!
> 
> I'll try to be consistent with posting. I normally am, but I'm doing some other life stuff right now, so if I miss a day or two, forgive me.
> 
> Also this is very loosely drafted! So if there are inconsistencies, ahhhhhhhh.

_ Clang. Clang. Clang. _

Armored men shouted into the night. Gunfire peppered behind their calls. Then, silence.

A shrill scream cut like a blade through the momentary pause in action ending with a gurgle of blood. The body fell into two pieces on the steel deck.

However, the assassin made no sound. The creature, larger than a man by feet, moved not only silently but with alien efficiency. His long, muscled legs glided below him. His rippling arms pumped his sprint faster. He wore a steel mask with a slanted visor for sight and a tunnel for a mouth. His armor covered the minimum of what could be considered vital, his torso. He could  _ almost _ be human, but his skin was a dark mottled green. In places, he had scales that were sharp ridges instead of overlapping smoothness. His forehead was too broad as well and from it sprung long dark tendrils of flesh. He was not human at all, but yautja. A predator to some, a hunter to others, but deadly to all who attempted to stop his escape.

Radr’Avin sprinted along the metal catwalks of the military installation’s rooftop, slicing at the guards that attempted to stand in his way with twin blades extending from his gauntlets. 

The majority of the base was open land. A barrier not built with walls but a good mile of flat space. In the center, small buildings were interconnected with roof access for more effective line-of-sight and patrols. The majority of the complex was underground, so the surface needed very little physical overhead other than bays for deliveries, a few barracks for staff, and any other small addition to make this installation look like a normal military base.

Radr had made it to the roof after gutting anyone he found in the lab below. There he had acquired his partial equipment, a mask, and with it, the location of his remaining equipment. But more importantly, the location of the data he had stolen. This information alone would prove to the yautja council that bad bloods were attempting to blot out the natural yautja race with their own altered, chimera one. 

These giant yautja were incredibly dangerous. They were altered on a genetic level using DNA from any species they found worthy. The results were… abominations, but… effectively impossible to defend against.

Radr’Avin would have been one of them if he hadn’t escaped. 

The fugitive, on the run from these cultural traitors and now these dull primitives, sprung a gap between two buildings, leaving the trailing human guards behind on a rooftop several meters away. He landed skillfully on his toned legs. The soldiers would find another way around. Their determination to capture him was commendable but ultimately laughable. Their weapons barely affected him other than some small puncture wounds on his scaly hide, highlighted in neon green blood. They would quickly heal without medical attention or scarring.

If he had his throwing disks, the pursuers would all be beheaded before they knew what hit them, but instead, they spent a second in shock before firing again. Radr dashed away.

_ Clang. Clang. Clang. _

Another set of footsteps vibrated nearby. He barely acknowledged the woman after him, but he knew. From his periphery, he could see the glint in her fiery eyes. Her dark hair whipped in the wind. She was still several meters away, but she was determined. As if a tranquilizer dart would do anything to him even if the small needle managed to penetrate his tough skin. He chortled to himself. A human hunting him? How  _ intriguing.  _

At the edge of the roof, he paused to access the distance he’d need to cross before the forest line. It would take him several minutes to cross the open field even at top speed. Thankfully within moments, a bus’s wheels squealed below him. It was a simple gray block of a vehicle, pitted with rust. The windows were shuttered with steel bars, but Radr wasn’t sure if that was to keep people out or people trapped within.

The fugitive dropped down from the roof onto the vehicle as it passed. The ceiling punched in with his weight but held. Immediately, the lone bus swerved. His descent onto the vehicle was far from stealth. He leaped away to roll on the ground as the bus U-turned toward him. He was on his feet again in seconds, a tranquilizer dart lodged itself in the ground. 

Despite her frail form, Casey threw herself onto the bus. On shaky legs, she managed to keep her balance. The bus drove abreast of him now, keeping pace with his running speed. Radr casually glanced into the windows of his new pursuer and caught eyes with a fresh heated gaze. This was obviously a small planet! The glare belonged to the soldier from back in the woods when Radr first arrived. He recognized his ugly blue eyes and blond scruff of hair. That  _ fool _ was the one that took his equipment! Radr growled to himself, a deep chest rumble.

Something above him broke the sound barrier, and even with the protection of his mask, his ear holes rung miserably. Radr glanced up to see a yautja ship busting through the stratosphere towards the base. He clicked in staccato. This was very bad. The chimera was here. Now! 

Behind the ship, two jets shot forward in pursuit. The chimera’s ship fizzled back into invisibility as the chasing planes launched twin missiles. One struck the unseen craft. The explosion expanded out mid-air like a bubble underwater. The flames drifted past the horizon, leaving a smoking trail. Despite the successful hit, the jets continued firing. Debris showered the ground further into the compound, while a mile into the surrounding forest became lit with blazing explosions.

Radr stopped dead, and the bus careened past him. Yautja were averse to running away. They were a proud species, so his stomach churned with disgust when, seeing the ship descend on the planet, he spun in the opposite direction. If he didn’t make it off Earth with the stolen records and brought it to assessment in front of the yautja council, his entire race would be at risk. His survival was too important for personal honor.

The fugitive heard the bus groan as it banked into a turn to follow him, but abruptly, the wheels screeched into a break. He whipped his head back in time to witness Casey tumble off the bus and the infuriating soldier that took everything of value from him launched from the folding doors. The human male fired a few rounds. Radr dodged into cover behind a building’s corner. 

His way forward was clear, but he was paralyzed in place. Concern bubbled within him for the human woman that had fallen from the bus. He struggled to clamp this odd emotion away, but without control over his own body, he looked back.

From another vehicle, a dark humvee, men were moving in on Casey's unconscious form, and their intentions were hostile. The annoying soldier was gone, running with his crew back towards a hangar. He was a coward!

Radr clicked miserably to himself. She was bonded to him now after drinking his blood in the lab. With a growl, he launched himself into a full sprint toward the encroaching men. 

His arm blade slipped out of his gauntlet as he struck the first man. The pointed edge punched through the soldier’s helmet and cranium with only a minor squirt of blood. He sunk to the ground just as the other attacker began to pepper Radr with gunfire. Neon green puncture wounds speckled Radr’s hide but he spun around as fluid as a dancer and beheaded the man. His head spiraled on the ground.

Casey woozily stirred from her prone position but didn’t wake. A tranquilizer dart flagged in her foot.

Radr’Avin crouched over her. She unfortunately would require some training. It was unacceptable for a possible mate to accidentally shoot herself. As he lifted her over his shoulder, a squadron of motorcycles barreled past him, skidding on the baked soil. They came about and circled him for a threatening second before stopping. Dust whipped around them in clouds.

“Hold your fire!” the familiar soldier squawked to his fellow humans, “he has a girl!” 

“You don’t think he’s the probing kind of alien do you?” a dark-skinned soldier queried while wearing a disturbed sneer.

“Shit! Fuck! He is, isn’t he!” a graying male twitched aggressively.

“Hold onto your assholes, ladies...” The annoying soldier frowned and hefted the rifle at Radr. “You. Alien. Put the girl down.”

Radr clicked testily at the band of men. Currently, he was surrounded, and the group could easily catch up to him on their cycles even if he was running at his full sprint. However, handing Casey over to them was not an option. As if he would respond to these  _ lesser beings' _ requests.

“You remember me, don’t you?” the man continued, “I hope so. I remember you. Can’t forget. I owe you for what you did to my men, Dupree and… Ahhh—!”

Radr flashed toward him and sucker-punched him to the gut before he could finish his sentence. The human’s breath wheezed out of him like a punctured balloon. He folded over Radr's fist. This human knew where his equipment was. He knew the terrain or even possible traps that defended it. Radr was sure he would need this man’s knowledge to accomplish his ultimate goal. He was an ideal target to take with him.

A bullet pinged off his helmet. The heated eyes of the darker man burned into Radr’s.

The group collectively tightened their muscles. Radr was sure they were moments from firing in earnest, but they held off, likely due to his two sudden hostages. He hefted the unconscious soldier onto his other shoulder and threw a leg over the bike seat. It was a rudimentary machine, but not dissimilar from other more advanced equipment he’d used before. Radr gunned the bike’s engine. The back wheel spun in the dirt, kicking gravel painfully at the gaping humans, before speeding off.

Immediately, he heard the motorcycles' fire behind him. Radr rolled his eyes. He had so many pesky emotions now, chief among them annoyance. Humans were testing him in a variety of bizarre ways. If it was to be a race to their common destination, that was fine with the fugitive. He would find his missing equipment and the valuable data and find a way off this planet. The humans pursuing him would either learn to keep their distance or suffer at his hands. It didn’t matter which they picked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, here is the villain!

Miles away a yautja ship plummeted through the Texas hardwood forests. The pines standing in the way of the flaming ship didn’t have time to bend and instead were drilled through or shattered completely. Curved shapes were left in the wood, blackened and red with warm embers. The ship itself collided once with the hard ground, bounced, and finally belly-flopped into a shallow swamp. A lone alligator was the sole witness, and it had wits enough to disappear between the roots of the ancient mangroves.

The ship smoked from a missile in one of its starboard wings, but with a fleck of its iridescent shielding, the fire was snuffed out. Even in the darkness, the nanobots beginning their repairs could be seen descending on the spot. By morning, the ship would be repaired.

Meanwhile, the pilot was already moving about the ship’s helm. He stretched his long limbs over his head, twisted his neck until the joints shivered and popped. After checking his wrist blades, he finally stood up. Like one of the ancient trees outside, a bystander would need to crane their head to see his face. He wore nothing but a metal-plated loincloth and a set of gauntlets. His bulk was impenetrable from the injections of  _ Tricophone _ DNA. He’d had three from this alien species, and when he returned to the clanship, he’d have a fourth. Armor would only impede his movements and grant him little additional protection than his own bare skin. 

Since he was without a mask, and therefore without the runes that proved him an accomplished foe, he painted his torso and flanks with the symbols in red. This additional patterning appeared in the dim light of the ship’s cabins as he made the rounds to check the systems for damage. There was none that the nanobots couldn't handle. His hounds were unharmed and alert in their cages when he got to the cargo bay. He also checked the weapon in its coffin-like box. It was secure as expected. He made triple sure that it was still voice-coded and password protected in a way only he could crack. 

Satisfied, he opened the hatch to the loud hiss of the ship decompressing to the humid night. His dogs lopped out first with minor snuffling pants as their lungs adjusted to the native environment before trotting off into the surrounding forest. He let them go get familiar with the territory as he went to visually examine the ship’s damaged wing. 

He was silent and motionless while accessing the twisted metal hole in his ship, but anger bubbled below his expressionless surface.

This _ fugitive _ was playing games with him, and it incensed him. That was the only explanation for his ship’s glitching invisibility shielding.  _ Only a clueless child would have taunted him like this. _ The chimera would find the wayward experiment and destroy him long before the yautja could make it back to the council. Their progress with the yautja genome must be protected at all costs. 

He was of the Antim’a, the Ad’vaita, the Ni’Hzre’yasa! The Ultimate! And this fool was wasting the last remaining moments of his life teasing him. The fugitive turned away the gifts that were given, and ran! Antim’a clenched his fist, digging his talons into the meat of his thumb’s base. Neon blood dripped from his knuckle and stained the fern fronds. The fugitive would make a poor hunt, but it had to be done.

To ease his heated aggression, thankfully, a distraction was provided. A jet screeched above him. It was obviously surveying the damage of the fallen ship. Antim’a had left a smoldering, ground-out path through the woods. He would have to take out these interlopers before they could return to alert their kind. As of now, his location was still undiscovered to the planet. Before leaving the cockpit he had turned on the communication scramblers, and this tool was likely wreaking havoc on the jets’ ability to communicate with each other and their base. His yellow eyes tracked the aircraft overhead.

Meanwhile, the pilot of the F-16 Fighting Falcon was preoccupied with scanning the ground and the skid mark left by the ship below. His call sign was Curly and he was partnered with Snake to immobilize the boogie flying down from outer space. However, he was not supposed to  _ destroy _ the UFO. As with any mission, Curly didn’t ask any questions. It was above his payroll. 

While Curly could see the shiny hull of the fallen ship in the smoking crater on the planet’s surface, he didn’t see the giant creature standing outside in the forest foliage. The alien’s green, reptilian skin was the perfect camouflage against the backdrop of night and jungle. Instead, the pilot circled the crashed ship below him and prepared to send the coordinates to command, but his radio crackled in strange clicking sounds.

If Curly didn’t know any better, the noises sounded like warnings. He flipped the connection to short-range and tried to radio his companion pilot, Snake. Curly had a visual on the other jet at 3 o’clock. Despite the close distance, the feedback was the same. Disheartening clicking chortled into his headphones. The downed ship must be jamming their communication! Through the windscreen, Snake was signaling him with his hands, but it was too dark to make out what. Curly squinted in the dark. One of them would need to return to base and report the coordinates.

As he peered at his companion Fighting Falcon, something from the ground punched through his wing. It was small, no bigger than a fist, but it blew through the titanium shell like a bullet through a tin can. A missile on the wing began to smoke. Snake promptly fired the smoking rocket to get it as far away from them as possible, but it exploded seconds after leaving the drop. The pair of them shot through the molten fire high in the sky.

Curly managed to turn enough that the blast buoyed a draft below him, but Snake wasn’t so lucky. His damaged wing had lost one or two steering flaps, and the jet rocketed straight into the explosion. It exited blanketed with fire as red as a hot iron. Three seconds passed before Snake’s plane ruptured in a second larger explosion.

Anxious now, Curly scanned the ground. The boogie was still motionless below, smoldering in its pit. He looped over the crash to cruise at a lower altitude, just over the treetops.

This was a mistake. A large creature launched from the brush and clawed into the nose of the jet. Curly had never seen an animal this gruesome before. It had mandibles tucked closely against more fangs and bright piercing yellow eyes. Curly immediately yanked the yolk toward him. He’ll shake the alien off in the higher altitudes! But as quickly as he made this decision, the man was clawing closer to the cockpit with alarming speed. As the ship climbed, he punched through the glass of the windscreen.

Curly immediately slammed the red eject button. The jet’s cover blew off as his seat shot through the roof. His pursuer launched from the ship after a single moment and slammed into Curly, now trapped in his pilot seat. 

Thankfully, Curly didn’t live much longer. The yautja arrived back on Earth with the pilot’s parachute and his prey’s mutilated corpse.

Antim’a launched from the descending pilot’s seat before it met ground. He misjudged the height of his descent and landed hard. He was surprised when his body met limitations now because even though he rolled into the landing, his left forearm was twisted in an unnatural way when he returned to standing. He examined the injury with dissatisfaction before grabbing the wound and untwisting it with his other hand.

Despite the pain, which was also unfortunate, he realigned the broken bone and felt a tickling sensation at the location of the break. His improved healing ability was already beginning to work, and within seconds, he wiggled his fingers. That would do. He would need to remember not to fall from that height again until he’d found an adequate prey that would prevent this kind of damage.

Antim’a clicked shrilling to the forest. His dogs bounded back through the low brush. With the jets taken care of, Antim’a could focus on tracking his primary prey, the fugitive. It would take time to run the distance between his ship and where the beacon was leading him, but that was no matter. It must be done. His ship needed time to recover from the damage, and could not be flown again until the repair was complete. 

Antim’a preferred this kind of hunt. It tested his altered prowess. With his size, he could cover greater distances even faster than before. The thrill of wielding his enlarged form was beyond measure. He sprinted into the low hanging leaves in the direction of the city.

He would find what he was looking for, collect what he needed, and kill.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops a little late, but here we go.

The boy’s bedroom was dark except for an electronic blue glow illuminating a face propped and swaddled in blankets. Rory McKenna idly fiddled with the oblong device as it beeped from blue to red. A few days ago Rory had received a large package from his father. Since he rarely saw his military-married dad, it felt a little like Christmas digging into the box and unearthing from packing peanuts a large metal mask and this strange remote. After a brief inspection, Rory discovered it included onboard ocular projection, and that the remote would get random alerts from something. 

Whatever his dad was doing away from home, it was likely very cool and confidential. Rory for a moment savored the idea that he was let in on a big national secret, but then he got swept up in the mystery of the objects themselves. Where did they come from? Who wore this strange  _ gaming _ mask? And why were the games so unfamiliar?

His eyes blinked against the aggressive light before the object spat a harsh clicking sound and threw up some more obscure symbols into the air. 

Rory wasn’t able to decipher them in his barely-awake stupor. It had only been a few hours since he began attempting a translation. He pressed a few more buttons, small curves in metal that offered synaptic feedback more than an actual button press. The real control was the large dial in the swollen part of the teardrop-shaped module. Underneath this circle was where the abrasive light was emanating. Then, like the indicators hadn’t clicked on at all, they all shut off. The teardrop became as cold and unyielding as stone. Rory was unable to coax it back to life.

But somewhere, a few hundred miles away from Rory’s suburban hometown, a spaceship crashed to Earth, and a menace emerged.

Unaware of this new threat bounding through the forest towards him, Rory slipped back to sleep. His excitement didn’t lead him to toss and turn as an adult might. After all, he was barely twelve, and he had a busy, if not annoying, time at school the day before. His dreams spiraled with alien runes until they sank into anxious nightmares about the bullies that constantly tortured him in his waking life. 

He wondered where his dad was.

This was an excellent question and one that his dad really wanted an answer to as well. As of that moment, Quinn McKenna was currently unconscious and having a series of strange dreams himself. Ones about the texture of road blazing by underneath limp fingertips at ungodly speeds; about the nasty grind of a motorcycle wheel sparking on pavement because the weight load was too great. 

When Quinn slowly resurfaced, he was acutely aware that he was bound up tighter than the asshole of his first commanding officer. Thin wire constricted into his biceps, wrists, and ankles. He was nose down in dry grass and judging by that familiar iron smell, he assumed he was still in Texas. In a predicament he often joked about as incredibly arousing with the boys, across from him, was a beautiful woman. Her dark hair was tousled over her full-lipped, long-lashed face. Instead of snoring, she mewed cutely. Oddly, this woman was not bound up like him. She slept on her side with her hands cradling her face.

Not a bad sight to see upon waking up. The only snag was that his memories returned too quickly. Like an inchworm, Quinn threw himself upright in both panic and a creeping, expanding rage.

However, what he expected was to immediately greet the fearsome, masked face of that damn alien watching them sleep. That wasn’t what lay in front of him. Instead, it was an empty cow pasture. Beyond a ruined barbed wire fence and a covert, lay the thin line of the highway, still lit with speeding headlights, and a pleasant pink sunrise. Off to the side in the pasture was a ruined motorcycle, beached on its side, and still smoking. The tires were in shreds. Its belly ground to shit. Apparently, the military-grade cycle couldn’t handle the weight of the alien asshole.

Still, Quinn had the instinct to know they weren’t really alone. The creep was likely hidden somewhere, surveying them while they slept like some pervert, or maybe he was off hunting cow for breakfast. He rolled back down to face the slumbering woman.

“Hey lady!” His whisper was sharp. “Lady, wake up! It’s not the time for your beauty rest.”

The woman slept on despite wrinkling her nose against his voice like a child.

Quinn stuck out his lower lip and spent one moment longer waiting for her to spring awake. He quickly became fed up with her soft murmurs, so he kicked her roughly with his bound feet.

“Lady!”

That seemed to do it. She threw herself up to sitting as if preparing for a fight. She quickly scanned the same horizon Quinn examined, but when she turned her focus back to the man tied up next to her, her eyes flashed with immediate anger.

“What the fuck!? You kicked me!”

“Yeah, no shit! While you’re sleeping like this is the presidential suite, I could use a little help getting us outta here!”

She didn’t appear convinced. Instead, she glanced around more pointedly.

“Where is he?” 

“I don’t know, but he’ll be back.” Quinn propped himself up on his shoulder, “untie me!”

She definitely wasn’t convinced because she stood up to look at the motorcycle and then at the thorny acacia tree that also shared their company on the side of the road.

“Hey lady!” Quinn groused, now fully exacerbated.

“You’re Quinn McKenna. The soldier," she stated with full confidence. “The soldier that met the hunter first. I’m surprised you aren’t dead or in some holding tank. I’m glad Traeger listened to me.”

This information silenced Quinn, whose mouth was probably hanging open. 

“Yeah...that’s me. Sorry, but I’m at a disadvantage here. I don’t have access to a bunch of secret CIA files. So who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Casey Brackett, biologist.” Casey reached out her hand as if she was waiting for him to shake it. It took her a second to remember he was tied up like a spring calf. She quickly tucked her hand behind her back.

“That’s great. That’s real great. Nice to meet you, Dr. Casey Brackett,” he heaved a breath, “now that we are all acquainted, how about you fucking untie me!”

She chortled at that.

“I don’t think he’d like that.”

“I didn’t know we cared what  _ he _ liked...he’s a murdering alien from outer space and you’d rather toss your coins in with him instead of getting the fuck out of here?”

She shrugged.

“Your answer is to shrug? Fucking alien, from fucking Mars or some shit, kidnaps you, and you’re all for it?”

“Maybe it’s his way of flirting.”

Now Quinn’s mouth was really hanging open. He clamped it shut before the flies got in. Scoffed. He had no words for that. The woman was obviously crazy and was involving him in her own death wish. His life was just running him straight into the crazies these days, first that bus of second-hand soldiers and now this bubbly doctor with an alien kink. He thought he met some weird people when he was an active soldier, but it turned out once he was marked nuts, the asylum gravitated toward him.

He would have to play this like Alice in wonderland, embrace the crazy, make the crazy work for him. The only way out of this situation was through it.

“He’s going to kill me,” he twisted his gruff voice into a quiet admission, but he scanned her face for the needed pity response. Instead, the pity never arrived and neither did sympathy or compassion.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t already,” she snorted. Her eyebrows lifted in humor.

Quinn grit his teeth into a sour smile. His plan was an abysmal failure.

“You want me to die?” he bit out.

“No, but if he wanted to kill you...you’d be dead. That’s what I’m telling you. I saw him slaughter a room full of armed guards less than a few hours ago, and it's not like you...” She dragged her eyes over his prone form. He was wearing a t-shirt and cargo pants. His dog tags were hanging out in the dirt. “would’ve put up more of a fight. In conclusion, he wants you alive.”

Quinn couldn’t keep up his heated anger. He slumped slightly and rolled onto his back. The wires still dug into his wrists and biceps. Pale stars glimmered above him in the dark blue, warming with morning light. Honesty may help in this situation. 

“I stole some of his equipment.” He leveled his gaze at her.

“That’d explain it.” Her smirk was impossible to get rid of.

“He’ll never find it,” he snapped, the anger returned anew.

“You’re kind of dumb, aren’t you?”

Quinn glared at her for a second. 

“Alright, fuck this,” he rolled again so he was on his belly. He arched his back to the extreme until the wires bit into his skin to the point of drawing blood. If he didn’t do this quickly, he risked losing sensation in his hands for good. The nerves were already at their breaking point, cutting into them was only going to worsen the situation. At the pinnacle of painful tightness, he fished a finger into his boot and successfully drew out a small knife. 

Back on the bus, when the loonies had taken it, Quinn had pilfered the knife from their unconscious captors. After all, a knife would always come in handy, and naturally, he was right.

He sliced his bonds quickly and wanted to hoot with victory at Casey but she was looking at the horizon. Along the covert was now the front half of a semi-truck. The exhaust of its hot engine smoked from the twin pipes above the cabin. It blocked out the rising sun. There was a rippling shape moving towards them across the pasture that bent the new light like a prism. It was the size of a large man.

Quinn, freed, took off in the opposite direction. He stumbled a bit on legs that were recently getting blood flow back, but like any trained soldier, he knew how long it would take to get up to his full sprint despite that setback. 

Unfortunately, a net collapsed around him before he got more than fifteen steps away, and he tripped onto his face into the dry dirt.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself as a pair of scaly green feet materialized in front of him.


End file.
